Who is to blame?

We definitely do NOT blame the South Australia Police. Our Police Department is easily the best in Australia and if benchmarked would be seen as one of the best in the world.

Currently we have an excellent Police Commissioner we has had in decades who has a practical ‘down-to-earth’ understanding of his Department and in-depth knowledge of how to solve most of the current crime problems. However there is no doubt any Commissioner is placed under incredible pressure from greedy, ignorant and overbearing politicians.

In fact Police from all ranks are being put under enormous pressure from financially inept and morally corrupt politicians who see our Police as just another cash cow for raising revenue to pay for big projects we didn’t need and definitely could not afford. The Government is more than pleased to treat our highly professional Police Officers as nothing more than glorified Council parking inspectors to bring in the loot for them. Our Police must have a certain number of ‘contacts’ each shift – read ‘bring in a certain amount of loot for the Government’. Although the money gathering aspect has been virulently denied by Police most people with a modicum amount of intelligence knows that this is the true meaning of ‘contacts’. A few emails leaked from frustrated Police has time and again proved that this is the case.

The revenue raising pressure placed on our Police is like a stinking dead cat hanging around the neck of our Police Department. On top of this, the Government that once proclaimed in such a ‘hairy-chested’ fashion that it was going to be “tough on crime” has now announced that they will rip-off $150,000,000 ($150 million) of promised funds from the Police budget.

This at a time when we had a shoot-out in a restaurants, gunfights in the streets, drive-by shootings, home invasions resulting in injuries and deaths, people being assassinated at their workplace in broad daylight and people being shot and stabbed to death in our streets. We have a serious major crime, gang and illicit drug problem in South Australia. This will only get worse if many hours of Police time has to be spent trying to collect money for the Government with speed cameras and radar units instead of taking proactive action against violent criminals.

Even our elite units such as STAR Force, the Mounted Division and Dog Squad and others are expected to ‘bring in the loot’! They are being told “You are all Police Officers and this is what Police Officers do!” How insulting and demeaning to our professional Police service. Most Police have had a gutful of being treated as no better than Council parking inspectors by Governments and realise their image as protectors of the public has been undermined. Unfortunately many members of the public are starting to see the Police as cynical, heavy handed and unfair.